TALLINN, April 13 (NNN-AGENCIES) — EU states Estonia and Poland said they had blocked a Russian training ship from entering their waters because some on board are cadets from Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014.
Estonia’s foreign ministry had denied the STS Sedov sailing vessel permission on Wednesday after learning that it was carrying students from a maritime university based in Crimea.
Poland’s foreign ministry said Friday Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki had decided to follow suit for the same reason.
“The prime minister’s decision is to refuse” entry to the vessel to the port of Gdynia, foreign ministry spokeswoman Ewa Suwara said.
Earlier, Estonian foreign ministry spokeswoman Sandra Kamilova said: “Estonia does not recognise the illegal annexation of Crimea and, in our estimation, issuing a permission to the training ship would have contradicted the Crimea annexation non-recognition policy.”
The EU considers Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea to be illegal and demands that it be reversed.
After Estonia’s statement, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova took to Twitter to describe the move as an “unfriendly and provocative step”.
The diplomatic spat comes just days before a planned Moscow visit by Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid to open the renovated Estonian embassy there and to meet counterpart Vladimir Putin.
Relations between Moscow and Tallinn have been fraught since Estonia broke free from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1991, joining both the EU and NATO in 2004. — NNN-AGENCIES
